


In A Name

by icarus_chained



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Forging (Inception), Friendship/Love, Happy Ending, Identity Issues, M/M, Promises, Prompt Fic, Shapeshifting, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Truth, Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames chose his name for the words written on his wrist, chose to be the man his soulmate would know him as. It wasn't quite the lie it sounds, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In A Name

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt: "he wasn’t born with the name _Eames_ or anything like it – but he named himself for his soulmark, which read _Go to sleep, Mr. Eames_ ". Also, warnings for discussion of guns, open relationships, and Eames & Arthur being Eames & Arthur.

Arthur was laying out his armoury. Real guns, in the real world. He'd no intention of using them, at least not any time soon, but he liked to relearn them every so often. He was a surprisingly tactile man, was Arthur. His imagination ran on weight and heft and texture, the feel of component parts beneath his hands, ready to be dreamed into something better. He liked things to be as understood, as rational, as possible. It had a tendency to make him somewhat staid in places, but _very_ good at his job.

Eames liked watching him. He liked the way Arthur's shirt sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, the better to show off the minute shifting of the muscles in his forearms as he turned a slide rack contemplatively in his hands. He liked the way the red silk of Arthur's waistcoat drew the eye to the slim lines of his waist, the neat, self-contained poise of the man inside it. He liked the calm, intent expression on Arthur's fine-boned face, a hunter surveying his prey. 

He liked the inked line on Arthur's left wrist, the words written there that sent a bolt of pleasure through his belly every time. Soulmarks. They were good for a man's possessive streak, right enough.

"... You know my name isn't Eames, don't you?" he asked, somewhat idly, leaning back in his armchair with his hands laced contentedly on his stomach. 

Arthur hummed absently, not listening to him at all. Ordinarily, Eames might have run with that, murmured cheerful truths while happily assured that his partner wasn't remotely paying attention, but tonight he was in a sharing mood. He nudged Arthur pointedly with his foot, currently propped between Arthur's hip and a rather nice assault rifle, and didn't flinch at all when Arthur's hand snapped down from the slide rack and seized his leg instead. 

Point of fact, a flinch was the last instinct crying for his attention. Arthur's hand was cool and firm around the bones and tendons of his ankle, like a tether, or a shackle. It was a lovely sensation, really.

"If you're bored, Eames, you could head down to the gym for some exercise. Or some company, if that's what you're in the mood for." 

It was snippy, of course. Arthur was always snippy. But it wasn't jealous. His partner was ever the soul of pragmatism as well. Company is as company does, but soulmates are forever. Eames might have all the temporary companionship he desired, so long as he returned to Arthur in good order and not smelling of anything unfortunate. Fastidious, his soulmate was. Neat as a pin, and poised as the devil in the dance. God, but he did make bits of Eames stand up and pay attention. More or less perpetually, which could get awkward at times.

"Actually, I was feeling more personal than physical tonight, love," Eames countered amiably. He flexed his ankle in Arthur's grip, delighting in the feel of captivity from those hard fingers. "You can keep doing what you're doing. Just keep an ear out for me, alright? And, ah. If you could keep your hand where it is, darling, that'd be lovely."

Arthur shot him a glance, askance and maybe mild contempt, but he didn't dismiss the notion. Indeed, after a second he squeezed gently on Eames' ankle, his fingertips pressing nicely just beneath the bone. His other hand placed the slide rack precisely back into its place, and moved to fondle the lines of a H&K P2000 instead. One of Eames' favourite guns, that one. God. Alright, maybe physical could be a priority here as well. He could be flexible like that. But first things first.

"My name," he managed. "Birth name. Not Eames. You know that, right?"

Arthur snorted contemptuously, curling his fingers to give a bite of nail in mute answer to that. Yes, thank you. He wasn't an idiot. He'd probably rendered Eames' business identity down to base parts on that first job, and only wriggled deeper since. He hadn't found anything, of course. He'd have said something if he had, slid it into a private conversation somewhere. Arthur was smug like that. But he definitely knew which parts were real and which weren't, at least in the strictly legal sense. Eames could always rely on him for that.

It was reality in the _not_ strictly legal sense that got tricky. The reality of dreams and hopes and emotions, that was where Arthur started to have some problems. A fundamental skeptic, he was. A baseline disbeliever, and therefore the best man in the world to walk ahead of you into the land of make believe.

"You know why I chose that name?" he went on, smiling faintly to himself. "Eames. It's who I am, you know, even if it's not who I was born. When I think of myself, I think of Eames. You know why?"

"I suspect you're going to tell me," Arthur answered, smoothing his index finger up the ribs of Eames' sock, idly selecting another pistol with the gun hand. "You are in a sharing mood, aren't you?"

"They come over me from time to time," Eames agreed. He shrugged, waving his hand eloquently in the air, and Arthur glared at him, equally eloquent. Eames grinned back at him, light and easy. "I was watching your mark, love. Made me think of it. I named myself for you, you see. After the words on my wrist, the ones I'd know my mate by. 'Go to sleep, Mr Eames'. Seemed as good a name as any."

Arthur's face froze. Eames knew that expression, knew what it meant. It was the way Arthur looked when he was alarmed, wary, when he wasn't quite sure what was happening. He looked calm, poised, but his fingers were digging into Eames' ankle now, and his expression had come over as bland and calm as a winter pond. So. Saying that had made Arthur ... we'll call it 'worried'. Let's not break out 'afraid' just yet. 

That was Arthur, though. That was Eames' mate just perfectly. Anyone else would have found that romantic, that their soulmate loved them so much, even in advance of the facts, that he'd name himself in hope of them, build his identity around them. But Arthur didn't like lies. Arthur didn't like it when the important things weren't real. Arthur didn't like that idea at all.

God, but Eames did love him. With all he had, all his shrivelled little heart. There was no more perfect creature in all the world.

"Don't look like that, love," he chided, leaning back in his chair all relaxed and reassuring. "I'm not saying I'm all a lie, though we both know I'm pretty close. That's the thing, though. I was always like this. You've probably figured that. I learned pretty early on that names don't mean much. Have two, ten, twenty, as many as you want. They don't matter. Then dreams come along, and turns out faces mean about as much again. Little bit of work, little bit of research, man can be ten people if he wants to be. I am the best in the business. That's for a reason too."

Arthur turned to him. Fully, leaving his guns and his armour behind him, his arm crossed awkwardly across his body to keep a hold of Eames' ankle. Nice bit of symbolism, that. Perfect enough for a dream, though Eames was pretty sure this wasn't one. Arthur watched him, that calm, cool look like a hunting hawk, the point man assessing the situation for danger even as he laid his weapons down. Beautiful. Always, always beautiful.

"There's always a bit in the middle, though," Eames told him gently. Expounding, as he so rarely did, on his role in their mutual craft. It was apt. They were what they did, and then they were that little bit extra, in the spaces where they didn't. "There's a thing beneath the names and the faces, the place where you keep ... the bits that you like to think belong to you. The bits that are real, or as close as we ever come. I named mine Eames. Because of you, because of the words on my wrist. I named it Eames, and I gave Eames ... everything I wanted to keep. Everything I wanted to remember. The bits that mattered, you know?" 

Arthur didn't answer. His face wasn't frozen anymore, though the expression on it was a bit hard to read. Pain, Eames thought, or maybe hope. He was a wild thing, poised and delicate, so very lethal. It stirred something in Eames, something tender. Which maybe wasn't the sanest response to lethality, he allowed, but he could hardly have cared less. Arthur drew what he drew, pulled up all the pieces Eames had ever tried to keep safe, and pulled them raw. Arthur made him _feel_ , as real as anything ever had. Eames couldn't have dreamed a better mate.

"We live a lot of lies, you and I," he told the man softly. Moving his ankle in its cage of fingers, the better to feel their perfect certainty around it. "You don't like them much, for all you're good at them. I didn't know that, back then, but I think I must have sensed it. Or maybe I just didn't like them too much myself, for all that I was good at them too. Either way. I thought I'd keep the real parts for you. The person they belonged to. So I named 'em. To keep them safe, until we got here."

He shrugged, stiff and maybe a bit more 'worried' himself than he'd like to let on. And still, even still, Arthur didn't answer. He didn't _move_ , standing still and frozen with that wild, hunter-prey thing in his eyes, that lethal terror. A little alarming, maybe. The guns were only a bit of an awkward twist away, and Arthur was so very dangerous when it came to the less concrete realities. Dreams, emotions, and the like. Arthur was always so lethal when afraid.

But then ... No. Not the guns. Arthur reached for him, instead. 

He moved fluidly, precisely, with that hunting-hawk expression. He turned again, took Eames' ankle with both hands instead of one, and set Eames' leg calmly and carefully on the floor. One leg, then the other. Saying not a word, moving so silently he was dreamlike. He stepped into the space Eames' legs had left, moved between them until he was right over Eames himself, his neat hips in their red waistcoat just over Eames' knees. He leaned down, his hands slipping precisely between Eames' sides and the arms of the chair, bracketing Eames between them. A cage, slender and firm. Arthur leaned over him wordlessly, and Eames stared up at him in strange, tense adoration. His heart hammered, his gut tightened. Lust. Love. Terror. All of the above, and then some, as real and as raw as ever they'd been designed. He lay in the cage of his soulmate's arms, and never had he felt so utterly perfect a sensation.

"... I don't want you to be someone else for me," Arthur said at last. Not looking at Eames directly, fixing his eyes on the cushion by Eames' head instead. His jaw flexed, the minute motions of fear, of determination. "I don't want you to ... to change yourself for ..."

"I won't," Eames interrupted, but gently. He reached up, traced his hands over those lovely hips, brushed against them soothingly. "I didn't. The opposite, in fact. I kept the bits I didn't want to change in your name. Used you, the thought of you, for a totem, really. Which is oddly apt. You've always been good at that. Realer than all the world, aren't you, my love?"

"Don't," Arthur said. His hands curled slowly into fists. Eames could feel them. Arthur was a shaking, violent thing, waiting to be unleashed. "Don't lie to me, Eames. I'd rather you shot me than that."

Eames looked at him then, as strange and hollow and serious as he'd ever been. He reached up, very carefully, conscious of the danger of it, and took Arthur's face in his hands. He framed it between his palms. Arthur didn't flinch. Arthur was too calm and too sure and too lethal for that by far. He always was. Eames cradled him, that perfect creature, and nodded.

"That's what they mean, isn't it," he said, soft and sure. "Those words on our wrists. Soulmarks. If they mean anything, they mean that. No more lies. Never again. Don't you think?"

Arthur kissed him for an answer. He brought his eyes to meet Eames' own, bright and hunting and intense, and leaned down all the way. He pressed his forehead to Eames' for a small, oddly exhausted second, his face still cupped in Eames' hands, and then he _kissed_ him. Hard and fierce and as possessively precise as Arthur could be. A claiming kiss, a caging kiss, without another word between them. Eames could live with that. He could do a lot more than live, really. It was a nice answer in and of itself.

But then. Oh, but then. Arthur's hand came fumbling up from beside them, Arthur's body toppling a bit onto Eames without its support, and Arthur grabbed Eames' left hand awkwardly in his own, pulling it away from his face. Eames went with it, pulling out of the kiss and raising an eyebrow in confusion, but Arthur only glared at him. Arthur propped himself up on his right elbow, a very ferocious expression on his face indeed, and moved his left hand down Eames' left arm until ...

Oh. Until their marks were pressed together. Until their soulmarks were laid on top of each other, the words by which they'd recognised each other for what they were. Arthur joined them together, let them speak to each other in lieu of all the words he wasn't currently inclined to say. Eames laughed, startled and amused, for the personal rather than the physical, and pressed his own arm willingly closer. They were good words, after all. For years, they'd been the best words in the world, keeping all the best parts of his reality safe. His own pragmatic romanticism, and the promise of Arthur's snippy, amused response.

_You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling._

_Go to sleep, Mr Eames._


End file.
